Not Applicable.
The present invention relates generally to hearing prostheses and, more particularly, to systems for providing musical beat information to the hearing impaired.
In general, people with a hearing impairment like to participate in activities and social occasions in a manner similar to people without hearing loss. As is known in the art, there are a variety of conventional prostheses to assist people with varying degrees of hearing loss. Most hearing aids are useful to people with a slight to moderate hearing loss. More aggressive approaches are also known in the art, such as cochlear inner ear implants, for helping those with more severe hearing. Cochlear implants can help a person with damaged cochleae but with viable nerves running from the cochleae to the brain. Even more aggressive approaches are known, such as brain stem implants, that include systems for transmitting sound information directly to the brain stem, bypassing damaged cochlear nerves.
Typical hearing aids do not help those with a severe hearing impairment, and implants require expensive equipment, as well as delicate surgery or series of surgeries, which may not provide satisfactory results. Many people with uncorrected severe hearing loss would enjoy the ability to appreciate musical beat information. In particular, those with severe or total hearing loss would appreciate the ability to sense the beat of music, thereby enabling them to dance at social functions and the like.
Those of ordinary skill in the art understand the beat of music to be the repetitive change in signal intensity or amplitude within some part of the total acoustic frequency spectrum of the music. The beat information may be located in different parts of the spectrum for different music. For example, the beat may be a repetitive beat of a bass drum, with spectral characteristics dominating the lower end of a total acoustic music spectrum. Alternatively, the beat of the music may be dominated by a repetitive change in amplitude at a higher frequency part of the spectrum. For example, an orchestral piece may contain a repetitive sound from a violin, with spectral characteristics dominating a higher frequency part of the total music acoustic spectrum.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,958,486 to Sears, entitled Keyboard Attachments, discloses a hearing prosthesis having a direct electrical connection between a keyboard and indicator lights. The keyboard device provides a visual indication of the music played on the keyboard.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,908,869 to Ledermen, entitled Induction-Based Assistive Listening System, discloses a hearing prosthesis for inducing electromagnetic signals into existing hearing aids. The Lederman device can communicate to hearing aids without sound, thus providing non-acoustic communication.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,354,064 to Scott, entitled Vibratory Aid for Presbycusis, discloses a hearing prosthesis-that provides a tactile output in response to sound energy. The Scott device provides a tactile representation of the high frequency components of either speech or music.
While these devices can overcome hearing loss, such devices do not enable a person with a severe hearing loss to easily enjoy musical beat information. It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a system for providing musical beat information to those having severe hearing impairment.
The present invention provides a system for conveying musical beat information via tactile representation. With this arrangement, a person, particularly a person with severe or total hearing impairment, can perceive musical beat information so as to enable that person to dance. While the invention is primarily shown and described in conjunction with conveying musical beat information, it is understood that the invention is applicable to other systems in which it is desirable to provide a tactile representation of an audio signal.
In one aspect of the invention, a system for conveying musical beat information includes a sound detector for receiving music and providing a signal corresponding to the music to an audio processing unit. The audio processing unit generates one or more electrical outputs to tactile actuators for conveying a tactile representation of the beat information to a user. With this arrangement, a tactile output is provided in response to the musical beat so that a person with severe or total hearing impairment can sense a musical beat.
In a further aspect of the invention, the audio processing unit contains one or more electronic filters for selecting corresponding audio frequency bands. The audio processing unit provides one or more band-selected electrical outputs to tactile actuators, where the band-selected outputs correspond to the filter frequency bands. In one embodiment, each tactile actuator is responsive to the beat within a particular audio frequency band.